The Sims 2: Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (PC DVD)

Yesterday, my copy of The Sims 2 Bon Voyage - the sixth expansion pack for The Sims 2 - arrived. The basic idea of The Sims 2 Bon Voyage is that you can send your sims on holiday.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm a big fan of The Sims and I've bought every expansion pack for The Sims and The Sims 2 released to date as well as various versions of The Sims for consoles.

Being the Sims fanboy that I am, I realised fairly quickly that this expansion pack was based on the same idea as an expansion for the original series. I remember playing The Sims: On Holiday (as it was called in the UK; vacation isn't really used in British English) for many hours and I can easily see myself doing so with Bon Voyage!
Accommodation and resorts

Much like The Sims On Holiday/Vacation, in Bon Voyage your sims can choose from staying in a hotel or tent. Unlike On Holiday, your sims can stay in a private holiday home but sadly Bon Voyage lacks On Holiday's igloos. You can also builds your own hotels.

Sims have the option of visiting a mountain resort, the Far East or a tropical island. Each resort has unique attractions; the island has two ancient monuments whilst the Far East has zen gardens. Each resort has unique customs which your sim may learn.

The game also adds holiday memories where you receive `badges' for all the different places and things you do. For example, you would get a badge for getting a tour (there are various types) or making an offering to an ancient monument. After a good holiday, Sims will feel refreshed and they may opt for benefits (such as better productivity or getting over fury) but after a bad holiday they will feel less refreshed. Holiday frequently and you could find yourself with a frequent travellers card!
New objects and characters

The sixth expansion pack adds pickpockets who will pry on unsuspecting tourists (i.e. your sims). A number of other new NPCs are introduced such as a fire dancer (who will, for a fee, teach your simple to fire dance), wise man and local residents of the holiday resort.

The game introduces many new items such as a rolling log, axe-throwing `dartboard', sauna, massage table, secret maps, far east-themed and hotel-themed furniture. The far east decor is fairly refreshing; the closest thing in prior versions was a mini flag of South Korea!
Criticism

My main criticism of Bon Voyage isn't the lack of igloos but rather the fact it adds an extra screen to the loading process. This screen has marketing on and to actually launch the game one must press a button in this application. It appears to be an IE-based shell but I really don't think it's necessary considering connectivity to EA's community site for The Sims 2 is integrated into the game. There are added preventions from running the game off a `back-up' disc which might make disc-less play through hacks a bit harder.

I realise that preventing the game being played off back-up discs is a copy-prevention technique but it's quite annoying. I've had it accusing me of using a back-up disc once already... when I wasn't!

Another slight disappointment I have is that time on holiday isn't classed as normal game time (sims don't age on holiday and they can go regardless of how many `vacation days' they have). Also, it annoys me how the word vacation continuously occurs throughout!
Conclusion

The game does, though, have many of the frustrations of a real holiday... such as sunburn. Fortunately, we don't have to take our sims through an airport (and therefore no security controls :) ).

System requirement wise, it's about the same as prior expansion packs: 512MB RAM, 1.5GB HD space, DVD ROM drive, DirectX 9, 1.3GHz processor for 98-XP (2.0GHz and 1024MB RAM for Vista) and 32MB of modern graphical memory.

Bon Voyage is the second favourite expansion so far (following University). Let's just hope they don't keep re-releasing Sims 1 expansion packs or they might get to Superstar or Makin' Magic... (shudders)!

The Sims 2: Bon Voyage is my first expansion pack, and I would say it's very good, but sometimes it can take forever to load, especially when my sims are buying souveniers and walking home. Basically, you can create holiday destinations for a particular town-like making a downtown-and it can be one of 3 themes: woodland, tropical island or eastern. You can make holiday cottages for your sims, then they can buy them and stay in them from 3-6 days (you choose when you're booking your holiday on the phone beforehand). They can also stay in hotels and inns.
Some of it is a bit complicated; the installing is confusing and I had to work out for myself that I had to use the Bon Voyage disk to play, not my Double Deluxe disk, which is weird. Also, your sims want lots of different things once the game is installed, for example my family on holiday wanted to find bigfoot and wasted their holiday looking for him in all of the community lots.
Once the expansion pack is installed, lots of new furniture and clothes are evailable, so there are kimonos, shorts, grass skirts, new four-poster beds and circular tables, which are very useful for hotels.
Having Bon Voyage installed (and having to use the disk during gameplay) makes it no different from before, except that there are different options when you click on the people (they can take pictures of each other and walk places instead of taking the car) and there is a new button on the toolbar at the top.
I think that the best things on Bon Voyage are the music, clothes and the different destinations. I haven't made an eastern one yet but the tropical island destination is definitely the best, I don't know why.
There are also a lot of new hairstyles and and your Sims can buy jewellery at the shops, but I won't give away too much!

I recently bought this expansion pack along with the university and open for buisness one, and i think it is my favourite.

Pros:
- your sims can go on honeymoons
- they can buy holiday homes
- they can go on tours on holiday (helicopter etc)
- they can sunbathe and swim in the sea
- you can create your own holiday destinations
- they can learn local estures and dances
- they can dig for treasure

Cons:
- you don't actually see your sims go on a tour, they just go off in a taxi or heelcopter and then come back after a few hours
- they can get sunburnt but that is quite funny really

I discovered something quite good though for poor sims. If you have the open for buisness pack, your sims can dig for treasure and then sell what they find!